The invention concerns an apparatus for introducing articles into and/or removing articles from a machine.
In many areas in industrial manufacture, a suitable item of production equipment is used to carry out operations in which given articles must first be introduced into the equipment and/or removed again therefrom after a working step has been concluded. In the present case, reference is made in particular to the activity of an injection molding machine, but the present invention is not to be restricted thereto. There are a large number of production installations in which the present invention can be used.
An operation of introducing articles is involved in particular when for example material is to be injection-molded around the articles in an injection molding machine. Just by way of example, reference is made here to the operation of injecting material around hollow or tubular needles.
In addition a large number of high-value articles require orderly removal and deposit on a further transportation assembly.
An apparatus of the general kind set forth for the removal of articles from for example a mold cavity between two mold halves of a machine, in particular an injection molding machine, is disclosed in WO-A1-90/08625; in that apparatus, connected to a mold half is a drive element which drives a drive wheel on the other mold half and thereby causes a rocker member to produce a pivotal movement. An arm having a removal device can be moved by way of the rocker member out of the mold cavity, by virtue of the rocker member sliding into a passage between two guide strip portions and moving out of that passage in each limit position of the arm; the arm is respectively fixed in those limit positions between a fixed abutment and a further element. In each limit position a locking unit which is fixed on the mold half, together with the respective abutment, causes the arm to be fixed in position. That apparatus has proved successful in practice, but it is of a not inconsiderable structural size and is therefore suitable in particular for larger injection molding machines. However, having regard to the required level of quality of manufactured articles, it is nowadays becoming more and more necessary to develop robots for smaller-size injection molding machines, which robots can introduce articles into such injection molding machines and remove them in an orderly fashion.
FR-A-1562169 describes an apparatus with which tools on machine tools are to be automatically moved into position, in regard to stepwise axial indexing thereof.